by Joanna Bell
"Well are you? Spending it with your family?"
"Why are you asking?" I replied.
"Jesus, Blaze," he laughed out loud. "Has anyone ever told you you're an extremely difficult woman to get a straight answer out of? Not that it matters with a smile like yours, but still. I'm asking if you're busy over Christmas – now are you or aren't you?"
"But –"
"But nothing, woman! Yes or no?"
"Well," I started, still concerned about coming across as desperate or needy or something awful like that. "I usually spend it with my parents. But that doesn't mean I have to."
I heard the sound of Jack groaning in frustration on the other end of the phone. "I can't with you, Blaze Wilson. So, here's the deal. I'm going to Ireland for Christmas – to Dublin. And I want you to come with me – I'll pay for the tickets and the hotel. So this is me asking you if you want to spend Christmas with me in Dublin."
"I –" I stammered, unsure of what to say because the cartoon love-hearts were spinning too quickly around my head and making me dizzy. "I – Jack! Really?!"
"Yes really, you goof. What, Blaze? You think you're just some chick to me? After all of the things we've said to each other, all of the things we've done together – you're surprised that you're the one person I want to spend more time with?"
"I – I'm not surprised!" I replied. "I'm –"
"Yes you are, it's obvious."
"Well OK," I conceded. "But I think what you're hearing is happiness, Jack. I'm happily surprised. I didn't think you were even in a position to be traveling abroad, especially to –" I stopped talking as the destination – Ireland – sank in. "Wait. Is this about the bank account? Your grandma's account?"
"Yes," Jack replied. "It is about that – but it's mostly about me selfishly wanting to spend more time with you. If I wasn't going to Ireland, I probably would have tried to get you to invite me out to D.C. for Christmas with your parents."
My head was spinning. Jack wanted to spend Christmas with me – that was one thing. And apparently the Irish bank account had enough money to pay for two tickets to Ireland, a hotel and possibly more than that (like a ranch in Montana? I didn't care to hope for it) – that was another thing. And Jack was just casually dropping the fact that he wanted to meet my parents into an already dramatic conversation. I looked into the living room at Lulu, who was staring at me from her bed, her ears perked right up. She could tell something good was happening.
"My parents?" I asked haltingly, because I didn't quite know what topic to tackle first. "Well I would have been happy to have you for Christmas, Jack. I just didn't think you – wow, OK. Ireland? How much money was in the account, then? A lot? Enough to buy back the Ranch? I mean, not completely, obviously, but you could make an arrangement to make monthly payments. Yeah, you should actually –"
"Blaze."
"What?"
"Slow down."
"OK," I laughed. "OK. I'll try. I just feel overwhelmed with all this news. And I feel – Jack, I feel happy."
"Do you, sweetheart?"
"Oh God, Jack," I practically begged. "Please don't call me things like that. I'm barely hanging by a thread with you as it is. Then you call me up and ask me to come to Dublin with you for Christmas? And call me sweetheart? Just kill me right now why don't you?!"
"Mmmm..." Jack made a noise on the other end of the phone and I heard him inhale sharply.
"What?" I asked, worried I'd been too effusive.
"You," he replied, his voice pained. "You, Blaze. You are so – goddamnit, I don't even have the right word for you. What's the word for when someone is just so charming and sweet and sexy and all of those delicious things that you are?"
"Oh Jack," I whispered, not even thinking about the words before they left my mouth, because he was saying everything any girl could ever want to hear from a man.
"I wish I was there right now," Jack said.
He was hard, I knew it. I recognized that tone in his voice. And even as my mind was processing what it was hearing, my body was responding to him – to his arousal. "Jack," I said quietly. "Jack, please. You're – you sound so good right now. Are you –"
"Of course I am," he replied. "Even hearing your voice is enough to drive me to distraction, Blaze. Now, listen to me, before we get carried away – can you come with me? To Dublin?"
"Yes," I told him. "Yes, Jack. Yes, yes, a thousand million times yes."
"Good. Now. There's one more thing. I have to go make a few more phone calls right now but I want you to do something for me."
"OK," I agreed, because what was the point in even pretending I wouldn't do anything he asked of me?
"I want you to promise me something."
"OK? I'm not going to say anything to anyone at work, if –"
"No, it's not that. What I want is for you to promise that you aren't going to come until we see each other."
Why did he have to say that? Why did he have to say that and immediately make what he was asking me to do that much more difficult? I bit my lip and closed my eyes, feeling the warmth in my belly – entirely caused by Jack – begin to spread out through my body.
"Can you do that for me, Blaze?" He asked.
"Not if you keep talking to me like that," I replied, not even bothering to hide the fact that I was breathless. "Not if you keep saying things like that in that way of yours, Jack."
"This isn't easy for me, either," he said. "I'm so hard right now I think I would come if an especially stiff breeze blew through the room."
I giggled.
Eventually we managed to end the call without either of us failing to control ourselves, and I went back to preparing my salad with a feeling of real joy bubbling up inside me. Christmas with Jack McMurtry. Christmas in Dublin! Could life get any better?
That night, when I went to bed, I could barely sleep from happiness. And believe me, that's not a situation I was used to being in.
I didn't mention Jack's Irish bank account to anyone at work, either. Not to David McMillan, not to Pender and not to my boss, Melissa.
A couple of weeks later I was on a plane, looking down at the emerald green patchwork quilt of Ireland and so excited to see Jack again I was almost nauseous with it.
Life's funny, isn't it? You don't think you're that girl. You don't think you're the girl who walks out into the arrivals area of an international airport to a gorgeous, smiling man with an armful of flowers until it happens to you, and you put your face against his neck and breathe the scent of him in because even as it's happening, part of you still can't quite believe it.
"Hi," Jack whispered into my ear, kissing my cheek and the top of my head. "Hi Blaze, my beautiful girl."
I took a step back so we could look at each other, both of us grinning from ear-to-ear. "You should pinch me," I told him, "because I'm only about thirty percent sure this isn't a dream."
Jack didn't respond right away. He stayed where he was, looking at me the way I usually see people studying paintings in a gallery.
"Look at you," he said, bending down to kiss my forehead and then, slowly, my mouth. "Do you have everything? Are you ready to go?"
I was a little – OK, a lot – flustered by that kiss, but we were standing in the middle of a crowd of people and it wasn't possible for me to do what I wanted to do – which was remove all my clothes and lie down at Jack's feet to wait for him to have his way with me.
"Um, yeah," I said, as he grabbed my bag. "Yeah, I'm ready. Where are we going?"
"Somewhere I think you'll like."
I want to say we walked out of the airport hand in hand, but it felt more like floating. It didn't matter where Jack was taking me, of course, but when we got there – to a stone castle nestled in a green valley in the countryside outside of Dublin – I couldn't quite believe it.
"Jack," I said, turning to look at him as he took my bag out of the taxi. "This is like something out of a fairytale. How much is this? It looks really expensive. Can you aff –"
&
nbsp; "Yes," he replied firmly. He'd been incredibly cagey about how much money was actually in the Dublin bank account. I knew it was enough to get him onto a plane to Dublin, but that castle-hotel immediately screamed 'wildly expensive' and it worried me.
"I just don't want you wasting your –"
Jack held out his arm for me and led me up the wide stone steps to the front doors. "I'm not wasting anything, Blaze. And I don't want you to worry about a thing."
Inside, a formally dressed doorman took our bags and Jack and I climbed one of those broad Victorian staircases covered in the kind of deep, red carpet that muffled the sound of even the heaviest footsteps. No one else was around and, for a brief moment, I could pretend that it wasn't a hotel, and that Jack and I were the Lord and Lady of a great house, climbing the stairs to bed after a long evening entertaining our fabulously wealthy and interesting friends in one of our many grand drawing rooms.
"What are you thinking?" Jack asked, catching the dreamy look on my face.
I giggled. "Nothing. Something ridiculous. That this castle is our house and we're marr –"
Oops. I almost caught myself in time, but we both knew exactly what I'd been about to say.
"I mean," I started, "I just, uh I meant if we lived in a castle like this then we would necessarily have to be, um –"
Jack leaned in and kissed my neck. "You're adorable, Blaze."
My cheeks burned, but I almost forgot my gaffe entirely when we got to the room.
"Oh my God," I gasped, looking around. "Oh my God, Jack!"
It was like something out of medieval times – if medieval times had gigantic soaker tubs looking out over extensively landscaped grounds. The room was huge, with windows that were almost floor to ceiling. There was a huge old fireplace on one side, in which a fire crackled away.
"I asked them to have that ready," Jack said, nodding towards it.
The ceilings were high enough to make it obvious you were in an actual castle, and the heavy oak bed looked like it had been there for eight hundred years. The floors were, I noticed as I slipped out of my shoes, stone.
"Stone floors," I said to Jack, impressed. "That's crazy. This is a real, honest-to-God castle, isn't it?"
"Sure is. I was reading up on the family that owns it last night – it's been theirs for six hundred years, so this place is older than America."
"You stayed here last night, too, didn't you?"
"Yeah. My flight landed just before midnight and then I couldn't sleep. I found the family history book in one of the lounge rooms downstairs while I was wandering around."
Jack and I were making small talk. Well, I was making small talk. Jack was answering my questions, waiting for me to settle down.
"I'm nervous!" I told him, giggling a little. "I don't even know why!"
"Well you shouldn't be," he replied, running the back of one finger tenderly down my cheek. "I know you're a worrier, Blaze. I know you're probably wondering if anything has changed, or if those few days at Sweetgrass Ranch were some kind of anomaly, but I'm telling you right now – nothing has changed. Not for me. If anything, things have just gotten worse."
Chapter Nineteen
Jack
"Worse?" She asked, worried. "What do you –"
"I don't mean worse – I mean, uh, more intense, maybe? Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that?"
"You missed me?"
It was difficult not to laugh out loud at that question – at the fact that she was actually asking, and appeared to be under the impression that there were a range of answers to give, rather than just the only true one.
"Of course I missed you, Blaze. I missed you so much that missing you has sort of become part of my days, like background noise or that thing where you ears ring all the time."
"Tinnitus?"
"Yeah. That."
"Did you just compare me to tinnitus?" She asked, still seeking reassurance. I was familiar with that behavior in women. What I wasn't familiar with was being utterly charmed by it, by how genuinely Blaze Wilson seemed to care about what I thought of her – not to mention the matching desire in me to actually give her the reassurance she wanted.
I pulled her into my arms and kissed the top of her head. "Don't be silly, I didn't compare you to tinnitus – I compared missing you to tinnitus. Always there, in the background, like –"
"Jack?"
Blaze turned her face up to mine, her chin resting on my chest and her expression somewhat pained.
"What?" I asked.
"I missed you too! Oh my God, Jack, I missed you so much. You have no idea."
She buried her face in my chest, slightly embarrassed at her own vehemence. I held her close, stroking her hair and just enjoying the straight up relief of having her with me again.
"These are beautiful," she said, running her fingers over the petals of one of the lilies in the bouquet I'd given her at the airport.
I knew what Blaze was doing. She was waiting. Waiting for me to lead, to ask her if she'd kept her promise. I could feel the tension in the air between us, in the way she was having difficulty looking me in the eye.
"They are, aren't they?" I asked, pretending I was happy to discuss flowers. "There are some lilies in there, and some peonies. At least that's what the woman at the florist said they were. I think she –"
"Jack!"
"What?" I grinned, unable to stop myself.
"I don't want to talk about flowers!"
"Oh? Don't you? Well you mentioned them so –"
Blaze pulled her shirt off over her head then, before I could finish my sentence. Next to go was her bra and, with it, any thoughts in my mind about continuing with the charade of not knowing what she wanted.
My eyes took in her body like a man dying of thirst takes in a glass of ice-cold water. I was already hard, just being in the same room as her after so much time apart. But seeing her? Seeing the way her lips were parted slightly, the way her stiff nipples stood up on the impossibly lovely swells of her breasts? A new and sudden urgency flooded my brain. I stepped towards her and took one of those perfect breasts into my hand, cupping it, squeezing greedily at her flesh.
She closed her eyes and leaned her head back, sighing at my touch and I swear to God I could have come in my pants right then and there if I let myself.
"Fuck," I breathed, yanking my own shirt off over my head and pulling her against me. "I missed you too, Blaze."
We stumbled to the bed, consumed with a sudden frenzy of lust, tearing off clothes and kissing and grabbing at each other. I had to be inside her. I told her as much as she lay back underneath me, sliding her panties down her thighs as my entire body throbbed with desire. There was nothing else for me except the absolute need to be as close to her as it was possible to get.
"Wait," she gasped, as her panties hit the floor and I lowered my body between her legs. "Wait, Jack. We need to use a –"
A condom. Yes. Fuck. I scrabbled for the box I'd already put in the nightstand beside the bed as Blaze squirmed underneath me.
"Hurry, Jack. Please –"
I didn't want to use a condom. Neither did she. But we both knew we had to. In the end it was probably a good thing I'd had to fumble with putting it on, because it gave me just enough time to make sure I didn't come the second I felt her warmth around me.
"Oh God," she gasped, when I first pushed into her. "Oh God, Jack. Oh –"
She was trying to bury her face in the pillow but I took her chin in my hand and forced her to look at me. I needed to see the way her eyes widened every time I thrust into her.
"Blaze," I moaned into her neck, sliding my hand down inside one of her thighs and pushing her further open.
I've been with women who give off the whiff of a performance before. Women who screech and writhe and bounce like they're on a stage and I'm the one person in the audience. It was different with Blaze. It wasn't some weird act of theater to be with her. She wasn't putting on a show for me, she was simply responding to me,
to my body. When I thrust into her depths her lower lip quivered slightly and that one exquisite little detail was hotter than a thousand random women screaming like porn stars.
I was attuned to her, too, paying a level of attention that I don't know I've ever paid to anything – or anyone – before, noticing every sweet twitch, ever catch in her breath. I felt it when her body started to tense up, just slightly, and she began to rock her hips against me a little faster than I was already going.
"Jack!" She cried out, sinking her fingers into my muscled shoulders. "Jack, I –"
"I know," I whispered, closing my eyes tightly against the urge to let go right then and there. "I know, baby. Blaze, I'm here. It's OK, baby. Come for me, Blaze, come for –"
There was no more holding back possible when I felt her tightening around me, over and over, little convulsions of pleasure that teased and begged and then finally just demanded that I let go. I slipped my tongue between her open lips and did just that, giving myself permission to fall over the edge and let the bliss overtake me.
Blaze kissed me as I came, stroking my face and searching my eyes like she was looking for the secret to the universe.
"Jack," she whispered, when she could talk again. "I love making you come. I love – I don't know – I just love it."
"Good," I replied, flopping down next to her on the bed and tying off the condom. "That's good, Blaze. Yes, I think I'll take you back to my cave and keep you."
She slapped at my shoulder weakly, still out of breath. "Shut up, cave man. I didn't mean it that way."
I rolled over onto my side and eyed her. "Oh? Didn't you? Because it kind of sounded like you did."
She gave me a cheeky smile. "OK, maybe a little. But only a little!"
"Oh of course, only a little," I joked, as Blaze's eyes began to close. "Don't fall asleep, gorgeous. It'll only make the jet lag worse. Besides, aren't you hungry? I feel like I could eat – uh, what do Irish people eat?"